Are you overwhelmed by the amount of book marketing you seem to have to do? There are a ton of ways to promote a book — but you don’t need to do all of them in order to drive sales. Instead, focusing on tactics that reach the right readers with the right message at the right time will let you spend less money (and time!) and sell more copies.
Exactly what those tactics are will depend on the audience you’re trying to reach. That’s why there’s no one-size-fits-all marketing formula that can be applied to every book. But in this book marketing 101 post, we’ll break down:
- Why you should target a narrow audience
- How to define your target audience
- How to reach a targeted audience
Why you should target a narrow audience
If you’re spending a lot of time marketing but not seeing results, you might be targeting too broad of an audience or the wrong type of audience (e.g., people who participate in giveaways for cash or gift cards only, never to be seen again). Authors sometimes implement these strategies in an effort to increase profits now, but they aren’t likely to lead to long-term fans or ongoing revenue.
This is a common mistake many authors and book marketers make. In an age where many readers have access to virtually any book at any time, it’s difficult to make a single book stand out to people who are interested in your genre and comparable books, let alone to the masses.
Rather than trying to market to every potential reader out there, instead focus your marketing efforts on a smaller group of “qualified leads” — readers who have demonstrated interest in the type of book you’re trying to sell. This will let you:
- Reach people with a product they actively want
- Filter out all those folks who probably won’t buy or become loyal fans
This will ensure you’re spending marketing dollars on group #1 instead of group #2. By targeting readers more likely to purchase, you’ll get a higher return on investment (ROI).
Note that it might take longer to see a high volume of sales, but these are the readers who will be returning customers and evangelists, so the long-term gains outweigh any short-term sales spikes that quickly diminish.
How to define your target audience
First, you need to learn enough about your audience to know what kinds of books they’re searching for. Then you can cater your marketing copy (e.g., retailer descriptions, email newsletters, display ads) to align with their interests and search queries, and choose the promotional channels where they’re hanging out (e.g., BookBub, publications, email lists).
So how can you define the right audience for your book to enable smarter, more targeted marketing? How can you better understand what readers are actively searching for?
Step #1: Determine what information you want to gather
First, put together a list of questions you want to know about your audience. Here are some example questions you could ask:
Demographics:
- What is their age, gender, and income level?
- What do they do for a living? Are they retired? Stay-at-home moms?
- What level of education did they complete?
- Are they married? Do they have children? If so, do they still live at home?
- Where do they live? (Region, urban vs. rural, etc.)
Psychographics:
- What are their favorite books (besides yours)?
- Who are their favorite authors (besides you)?
- What genres do they read most often? Are they loyal genre readers?
- What are their favorite movies? TV shows?
- How many books do they read per month?
- Do they read mainly for work or for pleasure?
- How do they spend their free time, aside from reading? What are their hobbies?
- What kind of vacation do they like best? Or do they prefer to stay home?
Buying habits:
- Where do they shop most (online and offline) for books?
- Do they make impulse purchases or hunt for great deals?
- What factors impact their book purchasing decisions most? Cover, title, reviews, etc.?
- Do they buy books based on recommendations from friends, authors, bloggers, etc.?
- Do they prefer buying series or standalones?
Online behavior:
- Where do they usually discover new books online?
- What publications and blogs do they enjoy reading most?
- What social media sites do they spend most of their time on?
- Do they visit any forums? Reddit? Facebook groups?
Step #2: Collect answers from your existing audience
Instead of guessing at the answers, ask your existing audience these questions. While this research takes time, the information you discover will help you run smarter book marketing campaigns.
Tip: If you don’t have a fan base yet, reach out to readers of books similar to yours — you could partner with comparable authors to send the survey to their email lists and share the data.
There are a few ways you can get these answers:
1. Surveys. Create a survey using a tool like SurveyMonkey, SurveyPlanet, or KwikSurveys. Create multiple choice questions (dropdowns, radio buttons, or checkboxes) as often as you can so you can easily compile the results. If all of your questions are free-response text fields, it’s harder to crunch the numbers, and will take longer to read each response individually. Send the survey to your mailing list (and publish it on your blog, if you have one) encouraging recipients to participate and explain why it’s worth their time to answer these questions.
2. Reader interviews. Conduct a few interviews with readers over the phone or Skype. Don’t be afraid to ask — many readers would be excited to talk to an author or publisher! Prepare a list of questions ahead of time, but anticipate going off-script, too. Try to dig into the reader’s rationale when you want to understand more about how they discover or purchase books. The anecdotal feedback gathered on these calls will help add color to the survey responses you’re analyzing in a spreadsheet.
3. Focus groups. A focus group would consist of 5–10 people you’d guide through a discussion. As an author or book marketer, it’s easy to discover focus groups… find someone who’s part of a book club and ask to tag along to the next meeting! First, be a fly on the wall — listen to how people discuss and respond to a book similar to yours. Then have questions prepared for the group, just like you would during a reader interview.
4. Social media. If you have a Facebook page or a Twitter profile with a substantial number of fans, you can review the insights tools on each platform to understand more about the demographics of the people paying attention to you online. On your Facebook page, navigate to Insights > People to see demographic breakdowns by gender, age, geography, and language.
On Twitter, navigate to your analytics page by clicking here and click Audiences in the top navigation. Here you’ll find all sorts of interesting data about your followers, ranging from demographic data to lifestyle information and consumer behavior.
Step #3: Create a reader persona
Now that you understand more about your audience, create a reader persona that describes your core customer. It doesn’t have to be anything long or complex — just a simple paragraph you can refer back to whenever you’re designing an ad, crafting a newsletter, writing a tweet, or want a refresh on what might motivate your audience to pay attention.
Here’s an example reader persona (which is 100% fake):
Debbie is a 45–54 year old married woman living in the suburbs whose children still live at home, or recently moved out. She’s college educated and works full-time, and she loves traveling and laying on the beach with a good book. She’s a loyal contemporary romance reader, and reads at least one book a week. Her favorite authors are Nora Roberts and Jude Deveraux, and her favorite movies are Titanic and The Notebook. When she’s not reading romance, she peruses People and US Weekly, and is subscribed to the blog Smart Bitches Trashy Books. She spends most of her time online on Facebook and dabbles with Pinterest. She also does most of her book shopping online. She’ll grab a good deal when she sees it, but if she loves an author’s work or series — or is tempted by what’s trending — she’ll buy a book at full price.
Once you better understand your audience, you’ll be able to target your marketing and focus your efforts where your readers live, browse, and shop each day.
Also keep in mind that a book may have multiple target audiences. For example, there are many Young Adult thrillers with crossover potential to the adult Thrillers & Suspense market. You can create multiple personas and different marketing strategies for each persona to cast a wider net.
Step #4: Learn how your audience searches for books
Next, compile a list of of search queries that your target audience is using to search for books like the one you’re promoting. (Later, you’ll incorporate some of these into your marketing copy and metadata!) Here are a few free ways to find these terms:
Research trending keywords. Google Trends can help you see interest levels of particular terms. You can enter a generic keyword in your niche, such as “romance novel,” for example, and see the interest levels over time. You can also see related queries that people most frequently use.
Research commonly queried terms. Similarly, you can use Google’s AdWords tool to research keywords people are searching for, and how competitive those terms are. Once you enter a broad keyword, Google will give you ideas for other related keywords.
Peruse book reviews. Head over to retailers or book discovery sites (like BookBub), search for comparable books, and scroll through the reviews. Look at the terms and phrases people use to describe those books. Unlike the book description — crafted by an author or publisher — this is the language readers naturally use to talk about these books. This could also give you ideas for more terms to research using Google Trends or the AdWords Keywords tool.
If you’d like more advice on how to do keyword research, this article from Kindlepreneur is fantastic!
Step #5: Compile a list of comparable authors
When running ad campaigns, it’s important to know what other authors your potential readers enjoy, so you can target those readers (and customize the copy accordingly). Compile a list by looking at the “Also Bought” section of a book or author’s retailer pages. Scroll through the pages to compile a list of authors who’ve written similar books.
You can also navigate to an author’s Amazon page and look for the “Customers Also Bought Items By” section in the sidebar:
How to reach a targeted audience
Once you identify a target audience, there are several ways to effectively reach the right readers. Here are a few of the best ways to gain exposure to the people who could become loyal fans.
1. Choose a book’s subcategories on retailer sites
If you don’t categorize a book correctly on retailer sites, you could miss out on exposure to the most relevant readers perusing those sites. You may typically think of a book broadly as a Romance, Young Adult, or History, for example. But each of these categories has a wide array of subgenres you can choose from on retailers like Amazon.
By targeting a subgenre correctly, you also increase your chances of being on the retailer bestseller charts for a specific category, which could drive a higher volume of sales.
2. Optimize the book’s metadata
It’s important to get a book’s metadata right so readers actively searching for related content will find the book at the top of their search results, whether they’re using Google or an online book retailer. If you’ve already done keyword research, you’ll know which queries your audience enters most often on these search engines, and which are less competitive.
Once you’ve narrowed the list down to 5–7 keywords you want to target, try to include these on the book’s retailer product pages in the following locations:
- Description headline. When adding a description for the book, you can use header stylings. Search engines give headers more weight when determining what a web page is all about. So be sure to include your top keyword term in this space.
- Description. Don’t simply stuff your description with keywords. Instead, elegantly weave these terms into the book’s pitch, or include blurbs and endorsements you’ve received that include these terms.
- Keywords. Certain retailers let you enter keywords you want to target. For example, Amazon allows you to enter seven keywords on the Details editing screen.
Here are some excellent resources to help you learn more about how to optimize an ebook’s metadata:
- Kindle Direct Publishing – Ebook Metadata Guidelines (with videos!)
- The Metadata Handbook
- How to Improve Your Amazon Book Description & Metadata
3. Run hyper-targeted BookBub Ads campaigns
BookBub Ads is a self-serve advertising platform (open to all authors and publishers!), and it lets you target readers who are fans of specific authors. Targeting readers interested in authors who write similar books to the one you’re promoting will allow you to reach an audience of book buyers who enjoy books like yours. Simply enter as many comp author names as you’d like in the “Refine By Author” section when setting up your ad.
If you really want to hyper-target, you can create a separate ad campaign for each author you’re targeting, and market to that audience in a specific way. Simply add the author’s name in the “Refine by Author” section…
… and then cater the copy of the ad design to that specific audience.
4. Run a targeted price promotion campaign
By discounting your ebook for a limited time, you’ll be eligible to promote your book through services like BookBub, which sends a daily email of price promotions to millions of highly engaged members who’ve specified which genres they like to read, so you know you’re reaching an audience of readers interested in content like yours.
5. Run social ad campaigns
Sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter let you target ads to a fine-tuned audience. Although these aren’t primed audiences of book buyers (you’re interrupting them while they’re keeping tabs on their friends), you can reach people who’ve expressed interest in similar books or genres on these platforms. Here are a few examples of ways you can segment your audience when creating social media ads:
Demographics:
- The age range of your target audience (e.g., 45–65)
- The gender of your target audience (e.g., female for Contemporary Romance)
- Language (e.g., choose English if your book is only available in English)
Interests:
- People interested in authors who write similar books
- People interested in similar books or films
- People who’ve indicated an interested in relevant genres
Note: targeting terms that are too broad (e.g., “romance”) will make your ad reach a wider audience that may not be interested in reading at all, let alone your book.
Friend connections:
- Friends of people who like a book’s or an author’s Facebook page
- People similar to your followers on Twitter
- Followers of similar authors on Twitter
For more in-depth tutorials on running ads on these social networks, check out our resource Top Guides to Online Advertising for Marketing Books.
8. Find relevant bloggers and publications
Consider coordinating with relevant blogs to promote giveaways, publish reviews, or feature author interviews. Hopefully your target audience surveys and research indicated what blogs and publications your audience enjoys perusing!
To ensure you spend your valuable marketing time wisely, limit your efforts to publications with the most relevant and engaged audience. Here are a few criteria to look for in each site you consider:
- What is the site’s target audience?
- How many readers do they have? Do they display subscriber counts?
- How engaged is its audience? Are users commenting on many of the site’s blog posts? Sharing their posts on social media?
- Do they write about books like yours or feature authors like you?
- Have you heard of the books and authors featured here before?
7. Seek relevant (and free) PR opportunities
Publishing articles about your niche across relevant publications is a great way to gain exposure to your target audience, whether you’re promoting nonfiction or fiction. Instead of spending hours seeking relevant publications and pitching your way into guest post opportunities, let publishers and reporters come to you for relevant quotes.
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a sourcing service connecting journalists with relevant experts. And you are the expert of your niche! If you sign up for a free HARO account, you’ll receive an email three times per day with requests for quotes. Since HARO’s category options are so broad, it’s best to sign up for the Master HARO list and set up your own email filters to only get alerts for relevant queries or from publications you know your audience reads. For example, in Gmail you could set up a filter like this to delete HARO emails that don’t include relevant terms:
from: haro@helpareporter.com -{“term one” OR “term two” OR “term three”}
Once you receive an email, search for the terms that let the email get through your filter.
Reporters often quote from the first responses they receive, so if it’s a relevant query where you have some expertise, don’t hesitate! This is a fantastic way to get free exposure to a relevant target audience.
8. Get creative, and have fun!
Your unique marketing strategy will vary based on your subgenre and the content of your book. So it’s up to you to understand your audience and know where you can effectively reach them. Here are a few creative examples:
- For a Chick Lit book with a makeup artist protagonist, partner with a beauty YouTuber to create a cute series of makeup tutorial videos featuring styles from the book.
- For a Middle Grade book, coordinate with local PTAs to organize a reading during a school bake sale or book fair.
- For a Science Fiction book, coordinate signings or giveaways at popular sci-fi conventions.
As you can see, there are plenty of creative ways to target a niche audience! Hitting “publish” and waiting for readers to find your book isn’t enough anymore — but marketing to too wide an audience can be a waste of time, money, and effort. Instead, reach the right readers with the right message to increase their awareness of the book — and convince them they’d love it. We hope this book marketing 101 has been helpful!
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